Members of the Prospect union at the four sites of the National Museum of Science and Industry have voted for a series of one-day strikes by a majority of nine to one, their union have announced.

Museum curators, conservators, technical staff and managers are angry that they have still not received a pay offer due in April 2007. They fear that the delay is due to plans by the NMSI’s new director, Martin Earwicker, to make sweeping changes to the terms and conditions of all staff, including pulling the museum out of the civil service pension scheme.

Emily Boase, Prospect negotiations officer, said the result was a massive vote of no confidence by specialist staff in the director’s plans. "Members have had to endure an effective pay freeze for 10 months. The failure to even make an offer for 2007 pay is incompetence of the highest order," she said.

However, she said that plans for industrial action have been put on hold pending a final negotiating meeting with management on 26 February. "We are giving the museum a last chance to save the public from a totally unnecessary dispute," said Boase.

She warned that the director’s plans for the Science Museum to go its own way on pay were likely to be the thin end of the wedge for the rest of the country’s national museums and galleries. "The museum has its own trading company with inferior terms and conditions which it sees as a model for the rest of its own staff."

Staff are also very concerned at plans to terminate the museum’s current status as a Non-Departmental Public Body with ties to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Treasury. Boase said: "That would threaten its access to grant-in-aid and effectively turn the museum into a purely commercial enterprise, with tragic consequences for its national collection."

NOTES: Staff in the Science Museum, London, the National Railway Museum, York, the National Media Museum, Bradford, and the Science Museum, Swindon collectively make up the National Museum of Science and Industry. NMSI warders, security and administrative staff represented by the PCS union have also been balloted on strike action.